Director, Forward Deployed Engineering

Role overview Lead a forward deployed engineering team that turns ambiguous client needs into working AI systems in production. You will combine people leadership and delivery accountability with hands-on technical guidance, working directly with clients to shape solutions and helping the team build practices that improve delivery across concurrent engagements.

Responsibilities - Hire, coach, and grow engineers, setting expectations for technical quality, clear client communication, and ownership of outcomes. - Manage scope, quality, timelines, and results across multiple client engagements. - Lead client demonstrations, architecture discussions, and delivery workshops to explore how AI tools can address needs in the client’s environment. - Stay close to implementation by prototyping, reviewing designs, and unblocking work involving AI agents, tool use, integrations, and evaluation. - Identify likely next phases of work and collaborate with account leaders to shape and scope them. - Develop reusable engineering patterns, accelerators, and playbooks, and work with data, cloud, and digital engineering teams on end-to-end delivery.

Requirements - 15+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineers or technical teams. - Experience delivering client-facing work through consulting, solutions engineering, or forward deployed roles. - Hands-on experience building with large language models and agent-based patterns, including tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, workflow orchestration, and evaluation. - Strong Python or TypeScript skills, with sound API design, CI/CD, and cloud fundamentals across at least one major cloud provider. - Ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly to both executives and engineers. - Track record of taking ambiguous problems through to production.

Nice to have Experience with AI development tools, model APIs, or the Model Context Protocol; enterprise AI governance, security, or responsible-use practices; a data science or formal engineering background; or consulting and professional services experience.